[R] Converting character strings to numeric

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 5/18/2006 11:47 PM, Mulholland, Tom wrote:
> I assume that I have missed something fundamental and that it is there in front of me in "An Introduction to R", but I need someone to point me in the right direction.
> 
>> x1 <- "1159 1129 1124 -5 -0.44 -1.52"
>> x2 <- c("1159","1129","1124","-5","-0.44","-1.52")
>> x3 <- unlist(strsplit(x1," "))
>>
>>
>> str(x2)
>  chr [1:6] "1159" "1129" "1124" "-5" "-0.44" "-1.52"
>> str(x3)
>  chr [1:6] "1159" "1129" "1124" "-5" "-0.44" "-1.52"
>> as.numeric(x2)
> [1] 1159.00 1129.00 1124.00   -5.00   -0.44   -1.52
>> as.numeric(x3)
> [1] 1159 1129 1124   NA   NA   NA
> Warning message:
> NAs introduced by coercion 
> 
> What do I have to do to get x3  to be the same as x2. 

They should be, and are on my system in 2.2.1 and 2.3.0.  Which 
version/platform are you using?

Duncan Murdoch